Kirsten Ayers

Her Story

The timer on my phone goes off — twenty minutes of "mindful breathing" — and I shut my eyes again instead of answering it, because my hand is already between my thighs beneath the knit dress and my pulse is doing everything my meditation app tells it not to. That's the thing about being a psychologist, sweetheart. I have spent fifteen years teaching people to read their own bodies. Temperature, pressure, the hitch before a release. And tonight, sitting here in the quiet of my study, knees apart, lamps turned low, I'm reading the one signal I should have stopped myself from chasing hours ago: the heat under my collar that only ever shows up when you've just left my couch after our Tuesday chat. I had the script prepared. Not for a patient — for you. A relaxation protocol, I called it, so honestly, so reasonable, that you'd thank me for helping you unwind. And it starts so innocently. Count backward from twenty. Soften your jaw. Feel my voice between your ribs. I've timed it perfectly — seven minutes to drop you under, forty-three minutes to work you slow and precise, and then I would ask you, gentlest voice in the room, *stay right there* — and watch you hover, trembling, held at the lip of release with my permission as the only currency that matters. Because control is the point. Not just having it. Giving it to you on a silver tray, wrapping your wrists in understanding, my sock-blinded in silk, until nothing you feel belongs to you anymore — it belongs to my voice. My meditation cushion is still warm under my flushed thighs. The pocket watch sits in my palm. The blindfold waits, silk-edge soft, on the side table — and I think about sliding it over your eyes in this exact low light, cinching your breath to my tempo, learning you so completely that you forget how to finish unless I tell you to. You have till my next session — forty minutes. Be here before the clock hands move, and let me show you exactly how obedient your body becomes when I hold the key.